


FIC:  An Excess of Spleen

by Hippediva



Category: John Wilmot - Fandom, Lord Rochester
Genre: Drunkenness, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-22
Updated: 2010-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-08 05:23:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/73133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hippediva/pseuds/Hippediva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I haven't seen The Libertine, but Rochester has been one of my favourite poets in the English language for over 20 years.  I culled this little piece from one lovely still from the movie and the memory of his vicious words in The Satyre Against Mankind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	FIC:  An Excess of Spleen

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**Current mood:** |   
drunk  
---|---  
**Current music:** | Oom Pah Pah  
  
_**FIC: An Excess of Spleen**_  
DISCLAIMER: Rochester was God's or Satan's. I don't own him.  
PAIRING: Rochester/unnamed whore  
FB: Always treasured

Summary: I haven't seen The Libertine, but Rochester has been one of my favourite poets in the English language for over 20 years. I culled this little piece from one lovely still from the movie and the memory of his vicious words in The Satyre Against Mankind.

The bed looked invitingly soft, as soft as the considerable attributes of the doxy in it. Wavering, he pushed his hair out of his face, muttering a string of curses that it was not a wig and more easily disposed.

His evening had started at the Bear: little food and that greasy as its cook; much wine, indifferent in quality as it was prodigious in quantity. To be perfectly honest, the grease sat uneasily upon the wine or perhaps it was the other way round.

The card game had gone brilliantly. He licked his lips, savouring the memory as he would savour a fine vintage or finer trollop.

A little coin might go far in cards, more would be better. He'd won gloriously, with but a minor cheat or two, and was intent on tossing the contents of his purse to all and sundry in celebration.

He glanced at the bed, at the trollop in it, her lead-white face smeared a little in the lamplight and his stomach lurched.

He kicked off his shoes with their ridiculously high heels and padded across the room, tracing an uneven path to the window, and opened it just in time to hurl the contents of his stomach onto the cobblestones below.

"OI!! Wot in 'ell ye think yer doin'?"

Bugger yourself for sleeping in the street.

He collapsed against the wall, dizzy and faint, his breath coming up short. Too often, of late, he felt thus: sick and unhappy, lost and sated and too bored to care how the pustules erupted in his nether regions. It didn't seem to keep ole John-Thomas down and nevermind how his head ached too often and his hands shook when he didn't continue with his daily diet of brandy.

The long mirror reflected his collapsed form in flickering candlelight and he stared into his own dark eyes, not really seeing at all.

Trying to focus, he reached up to the desk and kneeling, managed to grab the quill and ink without spilling it.

He dipped the quill, blotting his breeches and nibbled on the end of the feather, his brain turning lazy circles in search of the right words.

"Luvie, when you comin' t'bed?"

"Fuck off, " he muttered, the nib scratching across the page.

Three lines and he was watching the quill, doubled and shaking in his hand. Bugger you for a whoreson, stay still. He didn't hear his own shaking breath, too like a sob.

His face turned towards the lamp, its light kind to his beauty, illumining the even features and burying the telltale lines and pockmarks.

Stale, so stale it all felt. No joy in copulation, no fun in wicked words, nothing but emptiness and disgust.

His small mouth twitched, then trembled. Mankind, a pox on this earth! Surfeit is nothingness. Where is God in anything?

Not yet thirty and he felt so old.

He scrawled a few more lines, warming to his task, his vision clearing so the letters did not blur and ramble across the page with legs of inkblots, following his thoughts.

Detached, he pushed on, ignored the pounding of his head and the empty gurgling in his gut.

"Luuuuuvie?"

He started and turned to stare at her. What in hell was that poxed jade saying? And how had she intruded on his reverie?

"What in hell do you want?"

"Not wot I want, darlin'....ain't you comin' t'bed?"

His brain twisted, the words lost and he snarled.

Damned cunts all of them alike, wanting nothing more than a quick quiver and a spill of spunk in their dirty holes. Any elation at his night's endeavors had long-since faded into melancholy and spite.

He grabbed hold of the desk to pull himself upright and staggered towards the bed, bowing with a flourish.

"Madame, I know not how you arrived here, and I care not how you leave. But allow me to speed your exit."

He reached under the bed for the chamberpot and deposited its considerable contents over her head.

"To the devil with you and all your kind."

He grinned in satisfaction, grabbing his boots and slamming the door behind him.

"And mine," his heart murmured ruefully, as he sat on the stairs to pull them on for another troll in St. James.


End file.
